About Me

I am a teacher and writer. I own Kevin`s English Schools in Kanagawa, Japan. I teach at Tokai University. I have taught at: Keio SFC, St. Mary`s College (Nagoya), ECC, The YMCA, Columbia
College, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. My Japanese wife is a junior high school
English teacher.

Monday, December 31, 2007

LEADING OFF THIS issue, Congressman Ike Skelton advocates studying history to better prepare for the reality of the future. Complementing this theme, Matt Caffrey provides an interesting perspective with his piece on the history of wargaming. Just as we should not limit our study of military history to certain conflicts, in the mix of wargaming and history, so should we be careful not to wargame just the wars we would prefer to fight--rather than the ones we get. Effective military leaders will be students of both military history and wargaming.

Studying military history reveals that our ability to terminate wars militarily exceeds our ability to end them politically. Interestingly, we also terminate wargames militarily better than we end them politically. The interesting mix of military history and wargaming is important to the profession of arms. Each affects the other, but in a sense they exist in orthogonal planes. War is hardly a game, and wargaming certainly is not war. Hopefully, military history reflects past reality, but wargaming reflects potential reality--in the future or the past. Wargaming can also influence future reality and, consequently, military history.

Military history is full of painful insight about the end states of war. For example, due in part to the Versailles Diktat following World War I, that conflict certainly was not the "war to end all wars." The aftermath of World War II was also enigmatic, leading to the cold war and Korea, among other problems. The Korean conflict clearly has not yet left us. The denouement of Vietnam was hardly spectacular. We are still heavily engaged with no-fly zones in Southwest Asia--as Maj Brent Talbot and Lt Jeffrey Hicks remind us in their article. And Europe is still haunted by the Balkans nightmare, despite world wars and air campaigns like the recent one over Kosovo--analyzed in Lt Col Paul Strickland's piece on Operation Allied Force. Military leaders are well aware of war's end-state dilemmas; yet, despite much focus on desired end states, historical reality reflects many undesired outcomes.

Wargames might also provide insight about ending war, but usually they do not. Why? The answer is that wargames support their intended objectives, and although many of them focus on desired end states of war, they are not specifically designed to do that--thus, in practice, they don't. Typically, an educational wargame begins with growing political, economic, and social unrest in one or more conceptual theaters. Then the scenario builds, with increasing problems leading to open hostilities and consequent decisions to engage militarily. In this process, wargaming students concentrate on the difficult challenges of deploying, employing, and sustaining military forces-and hopefully learn something in the process. Unfortunately, however, learning often stops there and does not include grappling with issues about the desired end states after the termination of shooting.

By the time most educational wargames reach the end state of war, students are exhausted and eager to finish (as are combatants in real war). Hence, wargames often terminate in a fizzle because students' minds are elsewhere, preparing to "go home."

What we need is specifically designed end-state wargaming, but one has to look far and wide to find it. We should begin conceptually with the war(s) already long into the fight and the major focus of the wargame on the end--and beyond. This would provide the time and focused mental effort necessary to really work through the complex end state of war fighting, involving the myriad military, political, economic, and social ramifications.

As students of military history, how might we see better end states from war? Because wargaming can, indeed, influence reality, end-state wargaming needs to be a reality.

(*.) Wargame, used as a single word, runs contrary to current English lexicographical practice. But with an eye toward the German rendering of the concept in the single word Kriegsspiel, for purposes of simplicity in this issue of APJ, we spell the term--and its variants--as one word.

My intellectual friends, my arty-fatty friends, hell, even my deep geek friends think I've gone off my nut on this one. White Dwarf is the monthly house organ for Games Workshop, Ltd., a UK company that makes fantasy and sci-fi tabletop wargames. The hobby doesn't seem to be big in the US (though it's growing), but it's huge in Europe. Next to Star Wars and Star Trek, their future universe (Warhammer 40,000) is probably the largest collaborative alternate sci-fi universe out there, with over seven games devoted to it, seven (!) different magazines, dozens of novels, comic books, coffee table art books, THOUSANDS of game components and countless fan websites, White Dwarf is a gorgeously produced full-color magazine with beautiful photographs of mind-boggling 28 turn painted miniatures and futuristic landscapes. The game's enthusiasts spend inordinate numbers of hours lavishly painting details one can barely see with the naked eye.

I've always been fascinated with wargames, not cause I'm a hawk (far from it), but because I'm fascinated by systems and how they interact given fixed parameters and random modifiers. Wargames are perfect little contained systems (part fixed rules, part fixed variables controlled by dice and part real-time decision-making with the rules and rolls). Wind 'em up and watch 'em go! I've also always been fascinated by world modeling, creating believable worlds and climbing into them. This goes all the way back to creating comic books as a kid, then to playing D&D as a teen, later to computer games/MUDS/ MOOS, etc. Warhammer 40,000 is a collaborative world model that you render in the real world, on a tabletop. I don't just want to watch sci-fi, I wanna direct! WH40K lets me direct.Advertisement

The analog nature of the hobby is a great antidote to the digital saturation of so much of the rest of my life. When guys of my dad's generation got old, they made a space in the basement to tie their own fishing flies or to paint mallard ducks or whatever. Taking an alternate universe from a complex sci-fi mythology, and downloading it into an analog world of miniature models, alien landscapes, and futuristic architectures is perhaps how aging cyberpunks (at least this one) plan on retiring.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

I had a lot of fun, not just with the games but the people I got to play the games with. I have a tendency to lose a lot but always the other players make losing so much fun. Traveling so far has been worth it everytime and I will keep doing it everytime.

Thanks Matt for cooking solo for all of us and Nick for putting this together again.